


moonlight in your eyes, 1983

by unnagi



Series: moonlight, rain, you. [3]
Category: Joker Game (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1980s, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, continues from "swimming in cassiopoeia" !
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-05
Updated: 2018-08-05
Packaged: 2019-06-22 06:38:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15575949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unnagi/pseuds/unnagi
Summary: Jitsui was the moon he lived by.





	moonlight in your eyes, 1983

** moonlight in your eyes, 1983 **

Time disappeared on the last night of spring, leaving memories to float like flower petals on a relentless sea.

 

“Do you feel whole?” Jitsui’s voice gently soothed his ears. “You and I.”

 

The moon, like the curve of an ear, had been smiling as they collided. The sequence of events occurred seamlessly and carefully, like a strategic move being played out in a game of pool. Through day and night, night and day, they fell into one dream after another. Then it was going to be summer again, the summer of 1983… Hatano could feel himself drifting along the May breeze.

 

He got up and gazed out the window, a streak of cold air crept underneath his shirt. The 3am sky was black and dry, like seaweed washed up ashore. The sound of a siren waved past, then the arrival of the last train. It seemed like a long time ago, but he could feel it just as though it happened moments before. The feelings inside him rose and stirred at a constant pace, yet never winding down. He took in a shallow breath. _Do I feel whole? What the hell is that supposed to mean_ , Hatano thought. He didn’t know how he was supposed to feel.

 

He had probably wanted to run away at that moment, break into the seams of sky and sea. Running had always put Hatano’s mind to ease. The scent of salt in the air, the foam of the ocean evaporating into cigarette puffs, and sunlight glazing over his sight like cough syrup. The rest of world faded as though the ocean had washed it away, and the continuous motion transfixed him in a state of stasis. He was everything and nothing, and Jitsui had made him feel the same way – neither empty nor complete.

 

A can of cold beer was pressed against the back of his neck.

 

“Let’s go up,” Jitsui said to him.

 

Hatano peeled the cigarette off Jitsui’s lips, and stuck it in between his own.

 

On the freezing rooftop, they drank cold beer and smoked cigarettes, two planes flashed across the sky in opposite paths. Jitsui’s eyes were illuminated softly, like moonlight on a river. Watching him, Hatano’s gaze held no particular emotion, it was as though he only laid eyes on something to kill time.

 

Were they supposed to have a heart-to-heart conversation now? Hatano grimaced, looked down. The glimmer of streetlights seared into the cold air, a few puffs of smoke swirled like threads of silk. Just as though they were watching the sky from a distant planet, Jitsui made him feel strangely calm about the state of things. He had nothing to do, and no one to be.

 

“Can you feel that?” Hatano asked. A sharp wind came and left.

 

“Hm?”

 

“I mean, it’s cold as hell,” Hatano mumbled as he stuck a new cigarette in between his lips. He leaned forward and clicked down the lighter, using one hand to shield from the wind. It took four tries for a spark to manifest.

 

“Summer begins today, doesn’t it…” Jitsui mused. “No, it shouldn’t matter. If it’s cold, then it’s cold. One cannot specify something that has no inherent meaning.”

 

“Can’t you specify the meaning of that?” Hatano deadpanned.

 

“Time has no beginning nor end, is all I’m saying.”

 

“Time has no beginning nor end.” He mimicked Jitsui’s tone, as though doing that would somehow make him understand Jitsui better. Like an actor reciting lines out loud to figure out the nuances in his character, Hatano felt a small part of JItsui had been deposited inside him.

 

“You known, in that sense – time is just like an immortal being. It has its own way of living, it knows how to exert its presence onto the world…naturally, people get rushed down in the stream of time until they’re completely washed out of substance. Even then, time still gets bored in the middle of the night, it’d drift away on its own. That’s why we have moments like this – thinking, where did all that time go?”

 

“It has to be somewhere,” Hatano said.

 

“That’s right, it could be hiding in an old telephone booth as we speak.”

 

“Then? What if it doesn’t come out?”

 

The sepia-toned lights below glimmered and faded in slow motion. Jitsui took a sip of the beer, his other hand tightened its grasp on Hatano’s own. At this hour, nothing seemed real to his eyes. The moon was wandering away, like a distant balloon. A handful of stars rained down the sky, fused into the hazy streetlights. Dots of rainwater began to expand on the concrete, like a rippling river.

 

 

Summer always dragged on and on, diffusing across time like pollen spreading in air. Jitsui despised everything about it. The scent of sweat permeating with every breath, a yellowish glow sticking to everything under the sun, and the bone-white paleness of the sky, it all reminded him of the summers he had lived through in the desert town. Except there was rain here. The air grew dense and wet, yet warm at the same time, he felt like a meringue being baked in the oven, half-awake under the dizzying sunlight.

 

“Are you a sincere believer in all that life has to offer?” He had asked Hatano that day.

 

“Whether you’re sincere or not, it doesn’t matter. Things are given under the condition of return. If you don’t understand that, then nothing works.”

 

“How practical…as expected of you.”

 

Hatano threw him a glance. “I made that up, don’t take it so seriously...”

 

“Is that so…” Jitsui hummed to himself.

 

The sun, washed anew from rain made its descent to the horizon. Cicadas screeched as though announcing the sunset. The faint breeze brushed past Jitsui. He curled his fingers slightly, then relaxed his arms, feeling the mass they held. It was light, he felt as though he could rise at any second. The only thing keeping him on ground was thought, thoughts that if spoken would evaporate into thin air.

 

“Jitsui?”

 

“Hm?”

 

“You’re thinking strange things again, huh.”

 

“More or less…maybe I’m lost.”

 

“Lost?”

 

“That’s right. In the path of something irrevocably flowing into another, I’m lost.”

 

In the path of something irrevocably flowing into another, Hatano repeated in his mind. He understood what Jitsui meant, _more or less_.

 

“It’s hard to grasp something when you’re caught right in the middle of it.”

 

“What should I do?”

 

“It’s raining,” said Hatano, giving Jitsui a gentle pat from the back. “So walk faster.”

 

Warmth had flowed through every grain of light. The raindrops of summer showered down like soda water, the luster of the tangerine sky glimmered in thick air. Maybe summer isn’t so bad, JItsui thought. He belonged exactly where he needed to be, and existed along with just the right person.

 

 

They had hiked around the unpaved paths in the forest, enveloped under a thick canopy, until the path forked off to a streambed. They followed the uphill direction of the stream, the scent of rain permeated in air like spores. No one had spoken a word. Hatano walked effortlessly along the steep, moss-coated ground, making sure to operate at a pace that suited Jitsui. Prolonged silence seemed to have placed them in a trance, right then and there. The rain-soaked leaves, distant sounds of a waterfall, pockets of light slipping through the canopy. The forest had become a part of them.

 

Before long they had reached the river that divided the forest in half. Their reflections quivered on the waters, bathed in the soft glow of a rosy sunset. According to Jitsui, there would be a bridge at a certain point so they can make a cross.

 

“So how far is this place?” Hatano asked out of the blue. He took out the lighter from his pocket, flicked it down, and held the flame towards the sun.

 

“Once we get onto the mountain, it shouldn’t take long.”

 

“We can take a break if you want,” he said, putting the lighter back.

 

“…I’m okay,” said Jitsui. “Let’s try to make it before it turns dark.”

 

“If you say so.”

 

The pair lapsed back into silence. It got so quiet that almost anything could be heard. Sounds from a different time, a different place. Punching in the numbers inside a telephone booth. The first track in _The Dark Side of the Moon._ The pitter-patter of a distant planet’s downpour.

 

Climbing the mountain wasn’t as difficult as it seemed, they had settled into a workable rhythm in no time. The rough grounds were carpeted with moss, covered in rich, dense foliage. Occasionally a breeze swept by, raindrops slipping off the leaves. Somehow, Hatano could hear the sea. The waves crashed and thumped onto the rocks, he could even sense the resulting mist of seawater…Oh, he realized. The waterfall is right ahead! Go figure…

 

He had never seen a waterfall before, a real one. Never mind one this tall. Water streamed down at full force, flowing onto a short platform and rushing downhill. In thirty minutes, they had climbed to the level of the platform, about half way of the peak. He looked downwards. A large pool had formed below, the water crept in between the rocks to supply the narrower streams.

 

They made a turn towards the heart of the forest, seemingly having no need to continue uphill. A grey moon had resurfaced. As though it was stamped onto the sky a long time go, the moon held a translucent, fading glow. He licked his lips. There was the rain, the mist of the waterfall, and the unmistakable taste of the sea. He could still hear the waves rising, crashing onto a cliff.

 

“Jitsui,” he called out.

 

“Hatano?”

 

“Where is this…” he asked, even though he already knew.

 

Jitsui’s grandparents had built an observatory two decades ago, now it remained an abandoned building in the middle of nowhere. Most of it was hidden under the canopy, only part of the glass dome roof broke through the surface. Vines and moss crept all over the exterior, but the inner compartments were clean. It seem as though someone had regularly visited and made it their job to keep the place presentable. Everything was used, but usable. There was even a generator behind, next to the rainwater tank.

 

“Anything fun around here?” Hatano flicked on the lights inside. The place just seemed like a normal house, with an exceptionally tall ceiling…

 

“I guess I haven’t thought that far.” Jitsui shrugged. “How about the jetty?”

 

“Jetty?”

 

“Yeah, since the coast is nearby…”

 

“How can that be,” said Hatano. In this place, they couldn’t be further from the sea.

 

“You heard it too, didn’t you?”

 

“The waves.”

 

“That’s right.”

 

“You’re saying, in this place something can spontaneously manifest itself.”

 

“More or less…”

 

“Give me a break,” Hatano said as he lit a cigarette. He opened one of the windows and leaned on the sill, vacantly gazed into the horizon. Submersed in the lavender afterglow of the sunset, moonlight washed onto the world in rain. It was a slow kind of rain, each drop falling like a feather.

 

“Hey,” he called. “When we go back, the world won’t be the same as before, right?”

 

“You bet,” said Jitsui.

 

 

The sea was there all along, each wave tinted with a piercing light. Hatano ran his hands under the water, fingers digging into the sand. Every breath of the present soaked into him. He wanted to ask again, where is this? But he couldn’t say a word.

 

The cat approached them after sunset, slowly made its way across the wet sand and sat beside Jitsui, coiling its tail around. It was the same cat they had seen before, in the same place. The stars of the past glimmered above them.

 

“Time winds itself up until it reaches the origin, then it spins again, without cause.”

 

Yet it never goes backwards, Hatano thought, taking a drag.

 

“What happened to the people who used to live here?” he asked.

 

“They disappeared.”

 

“How come?”

 

Jitsui shrugged lightly.

 

“It’s easy to get lost here.”

 

“Lost in time.”

 

“That’s right.”

 

There was a song whose name he couldn’t recall, he had longed to hear it at that moment. Yet the more he tried to remember, the more it slipped away. For a split second, he thought of returning back in time just to hear it again.

 

_Return to fifth floor of an ordinary apartment block, unlock the door, dial the radio. The clock ticks past midnight, but the song doesn’t play. It never plays, it never played. Can’t be helped, Hatano thinks. Some things are out of control. That’s right! In the path of something irrevocably flowing into another…they’re lost – no, they’re only lost in each other._

 

The world won’t be the same as before. But one thing was for sure.

 

“It’s still 1983, right?”

 

Waves crashed into the night, black as coal. The smell of dirt and rain spread in air like spores. The sea, the forest, every grain of light under the sky existed within them.

 

 

The smoke from Hatano’s cigarette melted into the streetlights below, his legs loosely dangled off the rooftop. Summer, 1983. Submerged in his eyes, Jitsui was the moon he lived by.

 

“Do you remember that song?” Jitsui asked him.

 

“Why, you forgot too.”

 

“Seems that way...”

 

An unceasing, everlasting awareness clouded Hatano’s thinking. He gently bit Jitsui’s soft lips, as though taking the first bite of a madeleine. Jitsui had tasted completely warm and sweet inside. Their cold lips enveloped each other, and Hatano realized that he was no longer himself, or maybe he was never anyone to begin with. It was as though the wind was carrying him away, bit by bit, turning him into a terrible mess under Jitsui’s hold. He suddenly had so many things to say – one thought emerged after another, tugging at him from every canal. _Do you feel whole?_ He had all the answers.

 

“You and I,” he spoke. “We’re nothing.”

 

“Nothing at all,” said Jitsui.

 

The skyline wavering at the corner of his sight, he watched the soft glow of a full moon illuminate Jitsui’s eyes. Everything had turned still as the breeze swept itself away, in the midst of thick air a weak sense of warmth began to manifest. There was nothing else to feel and nothing else to hear, only the faint ticking of time in a far, hidden telephone booth. They sank forth slowly and fell, deep into the sea of lights. The moonlight in Jitsui’s eyes, a glimmer on his lips as his breath melted onto Hatano, one entity immersed into another.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! :')
> 
> it may b possible that this one makes even less sense than the last one but.... mayhaps i like it this way so idk lol


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